graphene

Welcome to another episode of “Cool Science Stuff That Probably Will Have Some Effect On Our Lives Later But We Probably Won’t Realize It.” In this week’s installment we present graphene photosensors.
While the vast majority of high speed data is transmitted via fiber optic cables, there is always a “last nanometer” problem where the light signals must… Read More

A graphene research initiative has been selected by the European Commission as one of two winners of its Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) research excellence award competition — to develop the potential of graphene as a silicon replacement for future high tech kit. Each FET project will receive €1 billion to fund 10 years of research “at the crossroads of science and… Read More

Material scientists and nanotechnologists get very excited about the potential of graphene — a one-atom-thick sheet of bonded carbon atoms that’s exceptionally strong and flexible — but they are not the only ones to see potential in it. Nokia is one of more than 20 industry partners who have pledged £13m worth of support for a new graphene R&D hub to be established… Read More

Graphene, “one of the hottest new materials in the field of nanotechnology,” has just made your car’s windshield wipers obsolete. Researchers at Vanderbilt University have devised a way to re-jigger graphene so that it sticks to smooth surfaces like ship hulls and windshields. Given that graphene can effortlessly repel water, you’ve just created a simple method to… Read More

Graphene, as everyone knows, “is a one-atom-thick planar sheet of sp2-bonded carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice.” (Seriously, I didn’t just check Wikipedia for that.) Scientists have been using the material for lots of different applications for some time now. Recent work at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center has focused on using graphene… Read More

Ice doesn’t get me very excited. I rarely get ice in my beverages because it’s merely “delayed water”. But some scientists have been studying ice, and have created a completely flat sheet of ice only two molecules thick. Apparently ice normally forms in a “puckered” layered formation. Thrilling! All you need is some graphene, platinum, a vacuum, and the… Read More

Made from graphene, scientists in the UK have created the world’s smallest transistor. Size? Oh, say, about the size of an atom.
The transistor, which could totally change the way electronics are made, is just one atom thick and 10 atoms wide. Again, it’s made from graphene, which, apparently, is a significantly better conductor of electricity than silicon. “We believe we… Read More